Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Announces 86 New Members

On May 22, 2017,blockchaintechnology partnershipEnterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) announced the addition of 86 companies to its membership. New members include Deloitte, National Bank of Canada ING, Toyota Research Institute, and Samsung SDS.

Julio Faura, EEA chairman and head of blockchain R&D at Santander called the enthusiasm around EEA “remarkable.”“Our new members come from varying industries such as pharma, mobile, banking, automotive, management consulting, and hardware as well as the startup community driving innovation. It’s great to see everyone come together and build the next generation of our economy on Ethereum blockchain solutions.”

As previouslyby ETHNews, the EEA was launched in February 2017, and since has grown in size and scope to encompass a wide range of companies in varying industries. The growing alliance of companies focus on researching blockchain technology solutions, standards and practices, and EntEth 1.0 (a reference architecture). The EEA maintains an open invitation for anyone to join in the collaborative effort to establish blockchain technology guidelines. According to the EEA, the framework it seeks to create can “enable the mass adoption at a depth and breadth otherwise unachievable in individual corporate silos and provide insight to the future of scalability, privacy, and confidentiality of the public Ethereum permission-less network.”

Deloitte’s Dublin-basedis exploring banking applications and Eric Piscini, global blockchain financial services leader, affirmed the company has been investing on Ethereum for a while.

“We are excited to actively contribute to the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and drive blockchain adoption globally,” said Piscini.

Dutch multinational banking and financial services corporation ING seeks a role on the cutting edge of blockchain development. Ivar Wiersma, head of wholesale banking innovation adds:

“For ING, leading edge technology is the key to developing innovative solutions for our customers and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is a perfect example of how we play at the forefront of these developments. Ethereum is an extremely powerful multi-purpose blockchain and we’re proud to partner with Enterprise Ethereum Alliance toleveragethis computing platform to seek efficient and secure propositions for our clients.”

Mass adoption by large private banks may be a sign of the efficacy of blockchain technology. David Furlong, executive leader transformation at the National Bank of Canada spoke about joining the EEA’s community of innovators.

“Working on the next generation of IT platforms in a sharing-based ecosystem is aligned with our vision and strategy,” said Furlong. “We are looking forward to collaborating with this diverse group of partners.”

Samsung SDS is a subsidiary of the Samsung group, which has shown interest in blockchains startups, having$1.3 million with its Samsung Venture Corporation arm into blockchain innovator Blocko Inc in July 2016. Kwang Woo Song, Samsung SDS vice president of distributed ledger technology business group described the company as focused on “delivering solutions for enterprise businesses” and that joining the EEA was a “clear decision.”

“Ethereum is one of the fastest growing blockchain technologies, with potential to provide exceptional benefit to enterprises. We look forward to active collaboration with the members of the alliance, and believe that there will be significant synergy opportunity to drive the adoption of blockchain in the enterprise space.”

“Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers are disruptive technologies with the potential to positively impact future mobility by accelerating the development of autonomous driving, lowering costs to consumers, and making more efficient use of the existing mobility infrastructure. Toyota Research Institute supports the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and its members in promoting common standards and tools to accelerate the adoption of this technology and the potential benefits for Toyota’s customers.”